too many folkers

i have now reached my limit for this new breed of folkies. i don't know why, but i reach a point where i just can't stand to hear anymore quirky, funny, uplifting, life-affirming music played by grubby looking barefooted/flip-flop clad people on acoustic guitars. this is not good considering the fact that we're committed to playing two quiet acoustic shows, undoubtedly with other folkies. i liked pretty much everything that we heard at the show tonight at the radish patch- i especially liked seeing mike's friend from mtsu- he was my favourite part of the night actually- but i just can't take it anymore.
the show started an hour and a half late and two extra people had hopped onto the bill that night. this brought the count of performers to six. that's too many. even if they're all good that's going to grate after a while. i wouldn't even want to see slint, low, sigur ros, mogwai, my bloody valentine and the brian jonestown massacre in one sitting. even in a group like that there has to be a low-point and a fatigue point.
plus we took mass transit to the show- which worked well on the way there- actually quite smooth it was- but extremely horrible on the way back. as in it took about 40 minutes on the way there are over an hour and a half on the way back. the conclusion- if anyone reading this is a chicago resident take note- if you're taking the redline south to get anywhere that is off of the blue line it is ALWAYS faster to transfer from the red line to a westbound bus. this goes double on weekends. literally. on the way there we took the train south to fullerton and then got off and transferred to the fullerton bus and got off about a five minute walk from the venue. on the way home we walked to the western blue line stop where we had to board the blue line shuttle (which is a bus that makes stops near all of the blue line stations between western and clark/lake because they're doing construction between those two stations during the weekend nights), sit for fifteen minutes not moving, get stuck trying to get through "the crotch" (which for you non-residents is the biggest mess of a six corners in the city- which is where north, damen and milwaukee ave all converge- it's always a mess) for a while, get off at state/lake and then wait for the red line train for 25 minutes which then (once it arrived) sat at the station for another 10 minutes because they're also doing construction on the northbound platform so on the weekend nights they have it run on the northbound platform, but you have to wait until it's clear thus delaying people going both ways, and then crawl through the "slow zone" once back on the regular northbound platform from armitage to addison on which they are ALSO doing construction. in addition to all of this construction they're doing construction on four brown line stations (including the one that we used to use to get to work back when it used to be easier to transfer to the brown line at belmont to get there) at the same time. not only that but they're also working on at least four stops on the south side where the service was already worse than the service on the north side before they started construction. another tidbit for you non-chicagoans- they started all of this construction- none of which will be done before december of 2008- which slowed all of the service down causing tons of riders to quit riding mass transit and drive instead and realised that they needed 98 million dollars from the state to keep it running at the pathetic rate that it is currently "running" at. maybe it would've been a good idea NOT to do construction on three lines all at the same time and be locked in to doing so until december of 2009. 2009 people- more than two years away. the solution offered in their catchy phrase 'leave early. leave late. alternate.' sounds nice doesn't it? what the fuck does it mean? 'we don't give a fuck about our customers, take them for granted and think that they're all idiots' is my interpretation. so basically that was it. after all of this though, the drunk dude who puked in our car and the two drunken beef man steak motherfuckers who were such boners that they made the pretty red-headed woman they were out with cry on the train seemed like minor annoyances. it was like a fucking odyssey. i'm sorry- if you spend an hour and a half riding mass transit around you'd better be able to get out of the train and step off into the fucking countryside. or at least in the suburbs.